Politics

Was Fiorina Telling the Truth About Abortion?

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For me, the only moment of genuine passion and conviction in the entire GOP debate came when Carly Fiorina linked the Iran issue (“the defense of the security of this nation”) with abortion (“the defense of the character of this nation”) Here is what she said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cy5mYuyMCA

Fiorina has been excoriated in the media for this statement, not least because the debate was the most-watched event for CNN. Planned Parenthood has been in damage-control mode over the ongoing release of undercover videos documenting the sale / donation[ref]A legal distinction without a meaningful ethical difference in this case.[/ref] of human organs procured during abortions. This kind of coverage does not help make their federal funding any safer.

This pro-Fiorina article from First Things (Fiorina Was Right) gives a good rundown of some of the criticism Fiorina has faced, for example, straight from Planned Parenthood:

The images show nothing like what Carly Fiorina said they do, and they have nothing to do with Planned Parenthood. The video footage that she claims exists—and that she ‘dared’ people to watch—does not exist. We have a word for that: It’s a lie.

Glenn Stanton, writing the First Things piece, argues that the video is real and provides the YouTube link with time stamps to see exactly what Fiorina is referring to. I don’t like watching these kinds of videos, but I did for the sake of understanding. The video produced by the Center for Medical Progress shows exactly what Fiorina describes. However, the video of the unborn human being with a beating heart and twitching leg is clearly not footage from the undercover sting operation. So what’s going on? Here’s MSNBC:

What does exist is a video interview of a former employee of StemExpress, a tissue procurement agency like the fictitious group represented by the anti-abortion activists behind the video. In it, she claims she saw a fetus with a heartbeat, and says her supervisor planned to procure the fetus’s brain for medical research. The video also includes unrelated stock footage of a fetus outside the womb that purports to be from an abortion… No one in the videos has even alleged that a fetus was kept alive to harvest a brain, nor is there footage of it.[ref]MSNBC also notes that the Center for Medical Progress has passed off images of stillbirths as images of abortions in the past. That’s a legitimate point in general, but not relevant in this particular case as we’ll see in a couple of paragraphs.[/ref]

So here’s what happened: the Center for Medical Progress (which has been releasing the undercover videos) used stock footage from another pro-life group called the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform during this segment of the video. They cut back and forth between an interview with a former “Procurement Technician” from Stem Express, LLC[ref]A real-live company that makes money acting as a middleman between abortionists and medical researchers who want human organs[/ref] describing the incident that made her quit her job and stock footage. The footage is clearly labeled, as this image (cropped to avoid any disturbing imagery) shows:

815 - Labeled Footage

This isn’t dishonest on the part of CMP. They were interviewing a woman about what she was asked to do (cut through the face of an unborn human being to harvest the brain) and why she was unable to do it (it was too horrific for her to go through with). Showing footage of a fetus of the same gestational age during the interview is neither misleading nor gratuitous given the content of the interview. Furthermore, the CMP video does not allege that the footage of the fetus was from the  specific incident being described by the interviewee. In fact, that would be strange because if they had undercover video of that incident they would be playing that video in addition to / instead of an interview. You interview people precisely because you don’t have primary evidence of the thing you are interviewing them about. That is what, to a large extent, interviews are for. Nor does the CMP video allege that the fetus in the footage is aborted, and why should they? That is not actually relevant. The fetus that is the subject of the interview was aborted, the fetus in the stock footage is there as an illustration to show viewers what we’re talking about. This woman was asked to cut through the face of an unborn human being. This is what an unborn human being looks like. Given euphemisms about “products of conception” and “uterine contents” and so forth, the inclusion of illustrative footage is entirely legitimate.

So let’s turn to Fiorina’s comments. It’s clear that she, either in watching the video or in remembering it after the fact, conflated the stock footage with actual footage of a fetus that was about to have its brain harvested. I do not think it was a lie because I do not think it was intentional. People misremember. That’s part of being human. More importantly: I don’t think it matters.

Think about the Planned Parenthood rebuttal for a moment. A woman testifies that PP conducted an abortion that led to a living, intact fetus and then ordered this women to harvest that fetus’s brain. Fiorina passionately declares that this kind of barbaric treatment is a threat to our national character. Planned Parenthood says, “Aha, but you don’t actually have video of that specific incident.”

This non sequitur is as morally bankrupt as one of Donald Trump’s failed enterprises. Does it really matter if this particular fetus in this particular video is the one that had its brain harvested? Or doesn’t it actually matter whether or not there was such a fetus that had its brain harvested on or off camera? Does Planned Parenthood think that something morally repugnant becomes morally acceptable just because it was not caught on video?

Probably not. But they do understand very, very well that as long as something is not seen it cannot generate or sustain outrage. And that is the real secret to Planned Parenthood’s ongoing success. They do not provide the assistance to poor women that they claim to[ref]For example: they do not offer mammograms.[/ref], and every single service they do offer other than abortion can be accessed at other community health clinics that don’t perform abortions (not to mention harvest and sell human organs). But they continue to enjoy widespread support and hundreds of millions of dollars of government funding and the abortion industry as a whole continues on largely unregulated and unopposed because abortion is invisible. We don’t talk about the unborn human beings who die, we don’t even talk seriously about the costs to the women who procure abortions, we don’t even talk about the toll this kind of routinized violence takes on abortion providers.

The specific video that Fiorina thought existed does not exist. But the kind of incidents that threaten our national character did take place and continue to take place. Which of those truths matters more? Planned Parenthood doesn’t really care; they just want you to think there’s nothing to see here so that you’ll move along without looking too closely.

 

Draft Mitt

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816 - Draft Mitt

After the most recent debate, there has been a spate of new articles about how and why Romney needs to come save the GOP. For example, Politico: It’s Time for Romney. KUTV (CBS affiliate in Utah) also got in on the action: Renewed calls for Romney to enter presidential race get louder after debate.

Turns out, there’s even a site–DraftMit.org–where you can go and sign up to do your part to try and drat Mitt into the 2016 campaign. Yeah, I went and signed up.

The reality is, there are several GOP contenders that look promising to me: Rubio, Fiorina and yes, even Jeb Bush.[ref]It grates on me to say that, but I thought he did well in the debate and I deeply respect his refusal to cave into ignorant populism on the immigration issue.[/ref] But as long as none of them are even seriously challenging Trump, why not hold out hope for my favorite?

While we’re at it: Rubio or Fiorina would make really great VP candidates.

 

The Origins of Mass Incarceration

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Brown University professor Daniel D’Amico has a staggering essay in the latest issue of Cato Unbound on the origins of mass incarceration in the U.S. titled “Why Nations Jail.” The common proposals for decreasing incarceration are “controls against racial bias, better social programs for the poor, drug decriminalization, and less punitive policing.” While D’Amico acknowledges that these elements matter, they do not account for global or historic patterns in prison growth. While economic factors like “unemployment, welfare spending, and union power correlate with cross-country imprisonment rates,” multiple studies fail to confirm a “consistent relationship between more liberal market economies – or higher economic performance – and larger prison populations.”[ref]He notes that more economically free countries actually have less homicide, yet have better crime reporting.[/ref] After continually demonstrating that the common narratives fall short when one examines the data, D’Amico offers a more compelling explanation: organizational structures of institutions. He uses the example of the American “war on drugs” to make his point:

Most countries prohibit drugs, but only America launches an ominously but fittingly titled “war on drugs.” It is not so much that we prohibit drugs, but rather how we finance and manage that prohibition, which sets us apart. I believe that America’s drug war, American criminal justice services more generally in recent decades, and those criminal justice systems that have behaved similarly, are all united by how much more power they afford to the national as opposed to local levels in criminal justice decisionmaking. And the result is mass incarceration.

Theory shows that more hierarchical organizations commit more errors of overidentification. Increases in criminal legislation, arrest rates, convictions, and sentence lengths would all seem to be relevant manifestations. Similarly, many public choice scholars have noticed that by concentrating perceived deterrent benefits while dispersing costs, democratic politics rewards the expansive spending, employment, and voter appeasement accomplished through criminalization and prison growth.

As D’Amico continues, he provides evidence that heavily hierarchical institutions and centralized power lead to higher incarceration rates. For those in support of prison reform, this essay and the research behind it are important.

The Limits of the Law

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I’m writing this post not as commentary but as one who doesn’t really know what to think about a topic. I’ve been contemplating for weeks now what exactly defines the limits of the law. We have various actions we consider immoral. Within immoral actions, some are illegal, and some are legal. Where do we draw the line? How do we decide which immoral actions to tolerate and which ones to outlaw? I will take for granted that no one here is Lord Devlin[ref]Lord Devlin was British lawyer, judge, and jurist who wrote that “I think, therefore, that it is not possible to set theoretical limits to the power of the State to legislate against immorality. It is not possible to settle in advance exceptions to the general rule or to define inflexibly areas of morality into which the law is in no circumstances to be allowed to enter.”[/ref] (or Judge Dredd) and simply does not believe the law has limits.

As the SEP entry on the limits of the law notes, the harm principle, as articulated by John Stuart Mill, is the best known answer. I know Nathaniel isn’t a big fan of the harm principle, but it does seem like a good place to start a conversation on the limits of the law. The Harm Principle may not end up fully capturing why we make some actions illegal and others not, but it does seem to define the most basic level of law. If absolutely nothing else, we have to keep Jones from murdering Smith.

If we accept the harm principle, the big question then is defining what exactly constitutes harm. Murder once more is a good place to start. Direct, grievous, bodily harm seems easy enough to identify as harm. But what about more diffuse harm like societal harm? If we do recognize diffuse, societal harm, how does one draw a line? We obviously cannot prevent all societal harm. How we do decide what to combat and what to leave alone? Is it simply another utility calculation of greater and lesser harms? And what of self-harm?

A further consideration is when, in attempting to prevent harm, we end up creating more harm instead. The SEP entry addresses this idea as well. Prohibition of alcohol increases alcohol consumption and adds criminal elements to a previously legal enterprise. Complete illegalization of prostitution drives vulnerable women further underground and away from law enforcement. To some extent, these problems can be avoided by more intelligent lawmaking (like the Nordic Model on prostitution, which protects prostitutes by making the purchase of sex illegal while the sale of sex is legal), but intelligent lawmaking can only go so far in the continual struggle with human nature. For example, I don’t think any amount of intelligent lawmaking would have made prohibition work. In effect, there seems to be a certain amount of pragmatism to lawmaking. We only have so many resources. We cannot change human nature. At what point do we surrender and accept a certain tolerable amount of harm?

Stepping away from the harm principle, what role does morally right action and social cohesion play in lawmaking? The idea (apparently called legal moralism) seems to have been totally banished from the modern mind (particularly proponents of the harm principle), but I don’t know if we can simply throw it out without a second thought. We shouldn’t go so far as Plato to suggest that the state should regularly and actively enforce the cultivation of moral virtue, to the point that there simply is no distinction between the moral and the legal, but I think there’s room in between Plato’s Republic on one end and a society whose laws are totally indifferent to virtue and social cohesion on the other end. Here I think Lord Devlin is more on target even if I don’t agree with his overall view:

For society is not something that is kept together physically; it is held by the invisible bonds of common thought. If the bonds were too far relaxed the members would drift apart. A common morality is part of the bondage. The bondage is part of the price of society; and mankind, which needs society, must pay its price.

I also suppose I take the ancient view that virtue and social cohesion are one and the same. Moral virtue produces harmony both in the individual person and society at large. Immorality produces disharmony in both the soul and society. But, as mentioned earlier, I recognize the need for pragmatism in this matter. The attempted enforcement of virtue can and often does produce the opposite effect or simply no effect at all. So we get neither virtue nor social cohesion and we waste state resources to boot.

On the topic of legal moralism, the SEP entry starts hitting on a subject that does conflict me greatly, the topic of marriage. I realize people are a bit tired of this topic, but I think it’s greater fodder for contemplation on the limits of the law. On the one hand, I recognize marriage as having specific characteristics (monogamous, heterosexual, and permanent) and purposes (the good of the spouses and procreation of children). These characteristics and purposes are central to the well-being of both individual persons, especially children, and society in general. But then I jump over to another topic, contraception, where I believe a simultaneously personal and societal harm exists, and I have zero interest in making contraception illegal. So what gives? How do I differentiate any legal objections I might have to gay marriage or divorce or polygamy from my total legal acceptance of contraception?

I can already tell this entry is a bit of a mess. I’m jumping around, mixing and matching moral outlooks (like utilitarianism and more virtue-based outlooks), not defining or exploring presuppositions, etc. It’s pretty bad. But I think this mess is still useful for generating a discussion. Let me know what y’all think.

Live-Tweeting the GOP Debate Tonight

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I’ve had a Twitter account forever. Thought I’d try something new with it tonight and live tweet the GOP debate on CNN tonight, starting at 8pm. Follow me on Twitter if that sounds interesting: @NathanielGivens.

If I’m happy with the results–who knows?–I’ll post them here.

Irving, Texas Saved from Homemade Clock

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Texas Muslim Student Clock
Ahmed’s clock, pic from the Irving police (via Wired).

That is a picture of a homemade clock that Ahmed Mohamed took to school to show his teachers. This turned out to have been a bad idea, as The Dallas Morning News reports:

Ahmed’s clock was hardly his most elaborate creation. He said he threw it together in about 20 minutes before bedtime on Sunday: a circuit board and power supply wired to a digital display, all strapped inside a case with a tiger hologram on the front.

He showed it to his engineering teacher first thing Monday morning and didn’t get quite the reaction he’d hoped for.

“He was like, ‘That’s really nice,’” Ahmed said. “‘I would advise you not to show any other teachers.’”

He kept the clock inside his school bag in English class, but the teacher complained when the alarm beeped in the middle of a lesson. Ahmed brought his invention up to show her afterward.

“She was like, it looks like a bomb,” he said.

“I told her, ‘It doesn’t look like a bomb to me.’”

The teacher kept the clock. When the principal and a police officer pulled Ahmed out of sixth period, he suspected he wouldn’t get it back.

He suspected that he wasn’t going to get it back, but he probably didn’t expect to get interrogated, intimidated by his principle, and then led away in handcuffs. For making a clock.

822 - Ahmed in Handcuffs
Ahmed being led away in handcuffs. Thats’ a NASA shirt he’s wearing, by the way. Very ominous, am I right?

Since then, some semblance of sanity has apparently returned and the police say that Ahmed will not be facing any charges. That’s good. On the other hand, they are standing by their initial decision. That’s hardly surprising. It will be a cold day in Hell before a police force in this country (or any country) voluntarily acknowledges that they made a mistake. That’s how authoritative institutions work: they preserve their own power at any cost.[ref]A notable example, in case you’d like a refresher, would be the Georgia county that refused to pay medical costs after police dropped a stun grenade in a toddler’s crib and blew a hole in his chest. This is par for the course, folks.[/ref]

At a press conference today, a police spokesperson claimed that the device was both “a hoax bomb” and a “naive accident.” That position makes no sense. A hoax is a deliberate attempt to deceive people. An accident is not. Which is it? Given that Ahmed’s behavior it is obvious to any sane human being that it’s really neither. It’s just a talented kid who wanted to show something cool that he’d made to his teachers.

The outrage factor on this one is high, and–while I admit I’m seething–I’d like to step back from just shouting at stupid people doing stupid things because they are stupid. That’s not productive. What might be instructive is this article from Gawker: 7 Kids Not Named Mohamed Who Brought Homemade Clocks to School And Didn’t Get Arrested. So: Let’s not pretend that Ahmed’s name is not irrelevant here. Obviously it is.

Although charges were never filed by the police, Ahmed was suspended for three days by his principle. For what? According to US Today:

The principal referred questions to the district, which released a statement: “We always ask our students and staff to immediately report if they observe any suspicious items and/or suspicious behavior.”

So. “If you see something, say something.” The problem with vigilance is that if you don’t know what to be vigilant for you’re not actually being vigilant. You’re being paranoid. His English teacher was scared. What does his English teacher know about explosives? Or electronics? Not much. The police were scared. One said, “It looks like a movie bomb to me.” Clearly we’re dealing with professionals here.

I know I’m veering into sarcasm again, but there’s a sincere point I want to make. Prejudice obviously played a role in this case, and prejudice obviously plays a role in a great deal of the injustice that happens in our world. But prejudice alone doesn’t explain everything. What happened in Irving took prejudice but also ignorance and especially fear. Fear and ignorance are catalysts that exacerbate underlying prejudices.

If you want to make the world more just and more fair, don’t exclusively oppose prejudice. Prejudice is hardcoded into human nature at a pretty low level. We generalize (make groups) and we infer (draw conclusions about general categories based on individual examples). Neither generalization nor inference are going away, nor should they; we need them to think. But as long as they are around, trying to train people to not apply generalization or inference in certain cases is fighting an uphill battle. It’s worth fighting, but maybe we don’t need to put all our eggs in that basket.[ref]There are other approaches to combating prejudice, and some are better than others, but all are going to face this problem when put into practice.[/ref]

I’ve written about fear a lot recently, once in the specific context of refugees and migrants and more generally when it comes to security and safety. The message in both cases is pretty similar. First, we need to be willing to assess risks rationally to the best of our abilities. Second, doing the right thing means confronting fear. There is no progress without a general willingness to take risks. They come down to the same thing: don’t let fear be in control.

There’s a saying that all motivations in life boil down to two things: love and fear. Or, less poetically but more accurately: attraction and aversion. Even the tiniest microorganism has to make that decision constantly: do I approach (a potential food source) or avoid (a potential predator)? As a general rule, I think life goes better when we let love lead the way. When we are motivated by what we want to go towards rather than what we’re trying to get away from. When we strive towards what we want to make happen by rather than what we want to prevent.[ref]This can be taken too far, obviously, but I like it as a general approach.[/ref]

So, in addition to our conversations about prejudice, it might help to also have a conversation about basic bravery. About setting aside our worship of fear. When 9/11 happened, it made the country better in a lot of ways: it brought us closer together (for a while, at least), it focused our priorities on what really matters (for a while, at least), and it reminded us of what real heroism and sacrifice look like (we seem to be doing a better job of remembering that one). But it also had some dark effects, and those effects are lingering stubbornly. Chief among them: it taught us a new kind of fear. That fear has already convinced us to trade away an awful lot of money, an awful lot of lives, an awful lot of our principles, an an awful lot of our civil liberties. We’ve spent an awful lot of time–individually and as a nation–being motivated by aversion. By fear. Maybe it’s time to change the motivation.

They say that we should never forget 9/11, but I think that depends on exactly what you’re trying to enshrine in memory. If you’re talking about the sacrifices and bravery of first responders and the folks on Flight 93[ref]And I think that’s usually what people mean.[/ref], then of course we all agree. But maybe there’s more we should remember, like what it was to be an American on 9/10, before our national psyche was scarred. I think there were some things we did better then. Like not overreacting to some poor geek[ref]I say that as a geek.[/ref] and his harmless hobby just because his name is Ahmed. We can’t just turn the clock back. We can’t literally forget, and we shouldn’t. But if we can get back even a little bit of that openness and confidence it will mean something. Because this time it we will be choosing openness and confidence and bravery in spite of fear rather than merely stumbling into them.

Let’s recognize prejudice for what it is and fight it. Let’s do the same with fear.

Close-Minded Christians Protest Bernie Sanders… Oh Wait…

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825 - Bernie Sanders at Liberty

Jesse Singal makes a simple but worthwhile point at NYMag: Liberty University Students Survived the Unsafe Space Created by Bernie Sanders and His Pro-Choice Views (somehow). The backstory is simple: Bernie Sanders came to speak at notoriously conservative Liberty University and, although he faced tough questions from a generally hostile crowd, no one protested to deny him the opportunity to speak and no one interrupted his speech. Contrast that as Singal does, with basically any liberal-dominated college you can think of:

For example, Emily Yoffe, who has written about the connection between alcohol and sexual assault, had a speaking offer at a West Coast college rescinded after a student organization told her that her presence would make victims of assault “feel unsafe.” At my alma mater of the University of Michigan, for example, a showing of American Sniper wascanceled (though later un-canceled) after students complained that the movie’s depiction of Iraqi Muslims would make “students feel unsafe and unwelcome.” Unsuccessful attempts to get Bill Maher and George Will canceled as speakers at the University of California – Berkeley andMichigan State, respectively, involved similar arguments about creating dangerous-feeling environments.

There are plenty more examples where those came from, of course.

I’ll tell you one thing: the word liberal sure doesn’t mean what it used to mean.

824 - You Keep Using that Word

The Moral Psychology of Microaggressions

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Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has an engrossing outline of a fairly new study on what are known as microaggressions. The study examines our transition into a moral culture of victimhood. The 18th and 19th centuries saw a shift from cultures of honor to cultures of dignity. Honor-based cultures tend to lack strong legal authority and institutions, thus socializing individuals to rely on their own bravery and capabilities to avenge insults and consequently earn honorable reputations. Dignity-based cultures see the worth of individuals as inherent rather than bestowed by public opinion. This moral paradigm is reinforced by the reliance on third parties (i.e., police or courts) for egregious offenses, though frivolous use of authority is often condemned and a general “thick-skinned” approach to insult is the standard. This emerging culture of victimhood combines the sensitivity to insult of honor-based cultures with the reliance on third parties from dignity-based cultures. Sympathy is preferred to honor and victimization is emphasized rather than inner strength and worth. The status of the “virtuous victim” has risen to the point of creating competition for the coveted title of most oppressed. This leads to the reporting (and fabrication) of slight offenses toward marginalized groups (i.e., microaggressions). Yet, this publicizing of microaggressions often takes place in already highly egalitarian, diverse, and affluent pockets of society with strong administrative bodies (such as university campuses). As progress is made toward increased equality and diversity, the standard for offense paradoxically drops. In other words, the richest, most equal, most diverse societies in the world will make the loudest denunciations for the smallest possible offense (whether actual or not).

It’s an absolutely fascinating read and an incredible insight into our current culture.

Where’s the General Christian Defense of Marriage?

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835 - Christian US

Last week I pointed out that a lot of the liberal glee at Kim Davis’s apparent hypocrisy was disingenuous. One of our commenters who supports same-sex marriage countered that there is reasonable grounds for suspicion about conservative motivations for opposing same-sex marriage, however. He wrote:

There’s a slightly deeper issue at play, which none of the news or reporters that I’ve seen has addressed. That is the observation that for “Christians opposed to marriage” (my term), the reasons–including scriptures and arguments about what’s best for children or ‘family’–ought to sound as loudly with respect to divorce. And yet in many voices divorce seems to get a pass.

This is a legitimate point, and it’s worth more of a reply than I gave in the comments at the time. So, what explains the discrepancy between Christian opposition to same-sex marriage (which seems loud and absolute) and Christian opposition to divorce (which seems quiet and muddled)?

1. People are selfish hypocrites sometimes, and this includes Christians. Divorce is something that a lot of heterosexuals have participated in and/or may expect to participate in at some future time. So it effects them in a way that gay marriage simply doesn’t. Therefore opposition to divorce is seen as either limiting their future options or condemning their past actions, and so they are more likely to accept it than same-sex marriage which they can safely depend on never impacting them directly.

2. According to Christian sexual ethics, divorce (or something like it, e.g. separation, annulment) is morally acceptable and even beneficial and necessary in a small but regular and persistent set of cases (e.g. in cases of abuse). But, by the same code of ethics, same-sex behavior is not routinely acceptable, even in a minority of cases. So you can’t attribute all the discrepancy between opposition to divorce and opposition to gay-marriage to selfish-hypocrisy, because some of the difference is actually intrinsic to the underlying Christian philosophy. Of course, I don’t expect any same-sex marriage supporters to accept that this is correct, but at least it is consistent.

3. Christians have been more opposed to divorce than I think the general public is aware. This is simply because conflict draws attention. When Christians oppose divorce and try to strengthen marriage they are, for the most part, not really arguing with anyone. There is no broad, popular movement that celebrates divorce or infidelity or walking out on your family. As a result, Christian opposition to these things tends to fly under the radar and go unnoticed. But it is there. In fact, that’s what made me think of this post. Thrice, which is my favorite band, has not one but two tracks on their fairwell album Anthology that address this issue directly. Here’s one of them, “The Weight.”

The other is “Promises.” Both of them are full-throated condemnations of modern sexual morality, including not only infidelity but serial monogamy, which is generally accepted through most of American culture.

Or how about Fight the New Drug? The anti-pornography organization “presents itself as a non-religious and non-legislative organization”[ref]Wikipedia[/ref]. That’s not at all dishonest–the group has no religious or political dogma or goals, but it is a marketing tactic to have a broad-based appeal. The fact remains that all four founders of the group are Mormon.[ref]LDS Living[/ref]

Then, as I mentioned in the comments at the time, there’s also covenant marriage:

Covenant marriage is a legally distinct kind of marriage in three states (Arizona, Arkansas, and Louisiana) of the United States, in which the marrying spouses agree to obtain pre-marital counseling and accept more limited grounds for later seeking divorce.[ref]Wikipedia[/ref]

This is a pretty direct attempt to mitigate the effects of no-fault divorce and, while it is not become at all common even in the states where it has been enacted, it illustrates a Christianity that is working to bolster traditional views of sexual morality in the public sphere.[ref]Whether or not you think that is a good idea is a separate issue, which I’m sure will be addressed many times at Difficult Run in the future.[/ref]

The reality is that the Christian fight to defend and bolster marriage is only visible when it conflicts with the mainstream of society, and it is visible in direct proportion to the extent of that conflict. When Christians sing about fidelity and marriage, basically no one notices. I’d wager that a lot of fans of Thrice don’t even know what Dustin Kensrue is singing about. When Christians campaign in ways that are indirectly opposed to social trends, such as fighting for abstinence-only or abstinence-first sex education–they are seen as obnoxious, backwards meddlers. But it’s not exactly headline news. And when Christians find themselves in a fight with an organized, dedicated, savvy coalition such as the gay-marriage campaign, then they are seen as bigots and it absolutely does become headline news.

In other words, a lot of the impression that Christians mysteriously decide to care about marriage just in time to oppose same-sex marriage is a function of the fact that no one notices what they are doing the rest of the time.

Now, a couple of closing caveats / clarifications. I’ve said “Christians” a lot, but traditional Muslim and Jewish traditions also oppose same-sex marriage. So do a small number of atheists and agnostics, including some homosexuals. But the focus here was on Christians, so that’s what I emphasized. There’s also some ambiguity around the term “Christian.” Is everyone who is born and raised as a Christian really a Christian? I don’t want to get into the business of being a gatekeeper and judging who is “good enough” to be Christian. That’s misguided, counterproductive, and distasteful. But it is worth noting that, when you see polls that show the extent to which individual Catholic opinion differs from Catholic teachings, a lot of that has to do with the interplay between religious conviction and sheer social-cultural inertia.

As long as religious belief is the default, and for the time being it still is in most of America, being an atheist is going to be a much more meaningful descriptor than being a Christian for the simple reason that–by and large–atheists are people who choose to be atheists. The same can’t be said of Christians, since the category embraces both people who consciously choose to be Christian but also people who haven’t really given it much thought and just happened to be born into a Christian family (to, quite possibly, parents who also haven’t given it much thought).

This is important, because it means that you should not be surprised when a minority of Christians actually get out there and support Christian beliefs. That’s not because Christians are more hypocritical than other groups. It’s because, as the dominant religious group in the US, the category includes a lot more “by default” members than other groups. That’s just something to keep in mind.

Tough Love from Jonah Goldberg re: Donald Trump

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I’ve been a big fan of Jonah Goldberg since reading his eye-opening and highly readable Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change. He writes regularly for the National Review these days, but Saturday’s post about the rise of Donald Trump is particularly important. Goldberg is not mincing his words from the headline (No Movement That Embraces Trump Can Call Itself Conservative) on down:

The late Bill Rusher, longtime publisher of National Review, often counseled young writers to remember, “Politicians will always disappoint you.” . . . But if it’s true that politicians can disappoint, I think one has to say that the people can, too. And when I say “the people” I don’t mean “those people.” I mean my people. I mean many of you, Dear Readers.

From there, Goldberg goes on to cite–correctly–Lord Acton (“Lord Acton’s original point wasn’t that power corrupts those who wield power, it was that it corrupts those who admire it.”), skewer decent conservatives who support Trump (“But this is not an argument for Trump as a serious presidential candidate. . . It is catharsis masquerading as principle, venting and resentment pretending to be some kind of higher argument.”), and finally just goes through a litany of reasons why Trump should not be leading in the polls. Why Trump should be a serious candidate at all. Why Trump should not be any kind of candidate whatsoever.

Read the article. It’s worth it. Especially if, like me, these words resonate with depressing force right now:

If I sound dismayed, it’s only because I am. Conservatives have spent more than 60 years arguing that ideas and character matter. That is the conservative movement I joined and dedicated my professional life to. And now, in a moment of passion, many of my comrades-in-arms are throwing it all away in a fit of pique. Because “Trump fights!”